"WHY READ 



** 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

The Insurance Society of'TJe'w York 



W. H. STEVENS, President 
The Agricultural Insurance Company 
Of Watertown : : : : New York 




Tuesday evening, October twenty-eighth 
Nineteen hundred and nineteen 



z /l 






I made a conscientious, nay an almost heroic attempt re- 
cently, to read that autobiographical work so highly com- 
mended by the critics "The Education of Henry Adams," 
— the hero a member of one of the most useful families America 
has produced. After reading many chapters with growing rage 
because his almost invariable comment on what seemed to me a 
succession of the richest opportunities ever placed before a 
youngster was, "All this contributed nothing to the education of 
Henry Adams," I finally reached his discussion of the relative 
values of the Virgin Mary and the dynamo. Then a genuine 
brainstorm intervened. I hurled the book into the arms of the 
unsuspecting friend who loaned it to me with the injunction that 
he should never affront my eyes with a sight of it again. In 
calmer moments I recall, now and then, an item from the book 
which suggests that my judgment and my temper might have 
been a bit hasty. 

Among other wise things, he said that education is for the 
purpose of enabling one to judge his fellowmen. Many of us 
might dispute that dictum but that's neither here nor there. Some 
friends conferred with define education in terms to indicate that 
Mr. Adams was headed in the right direction, but his track was 
too short and too narrow. Their argument (if you will permit 
me to seem to be philosophical tho' I only know philosophy by 
hearsay), runs as follows: 

Herbert Spencer describes life as harmony with one's en- 
vironment, death is just dwharmony with one's environment. 
I take that to mean in your language and mine, that we live only 
while we get along rather well with what is around us and when 
we get "on the outs" with what is around us we die, or at any 
rate, we would better. Now our surroundings consist of folks, 
things and events. If therefore, Spencer knew what he was 
talking about, and he certainly was an exceptionally wise old man, 
we will live best and longest if we harmonize with all three ele- 
ments of our environment — that is, for example, with folks by 
doing what folks generally approve, with things by climbing the 
pasture fence when the bull, which will answer for a thing, hints 
that we would better, and with events when we step out from 
under a falling safe. 

That argument should make the reason why education is 



desirable, very plain. If it's the right sort of education, we learn 
all we can about our environment, what it wants, what it will do 
to us or how it reacts when we do or omit certain things. If we 
try to learn only by experience, we will lead a painful and rather 
short and useless life. If we get an education before deciding 
important things for ourselves, we are just learning from others 
how to harmonize with our environment and so to begin early to 
live efficiently and comfortably. Of course the more varied one's 
environment, the more sorts of education he needs. The oyster, 
not being very active-or pugnacious-or noisy, has to know very 
few things to harmonize. The hen has to know quite a lot more 
than an oyster because she has more environments. (Have you 
noticed how she has improved her education about autos in the 
last few years?) The Indian needed a more extended but never- 
theless a very simple education. Civilized man certainly has his 
work along this line cut out for him. New laws, new prohibitions, 
new rights, new tasks, new customs, new dangers, new germs, 
new diseases, imprison him in an environment where opportuni- 
ties for disharmony are as thick as cooties in a doughboy's 
blanket. 

But you have had set before you, again and again, how much 
and why you need to do the work of the curriculum that is offered 
you here, how it will serve you in new and unexpected satisfac- 
tions, how it will increase your commercial efficiency and rewards, 
how it will elevate and dignify every department of your service, 
and how it will even lend a new interest to your daily tasks and 
give you enthusiasm in toil that would be, without this laboriously 
acquired knowledge, as flat, as tasteless, as insipid as — as — well 
let us say as many of you have already found it. I both hope 
and fear it has been a waste of precious time to repeat all this 
to you. Your presence here would seem to indicate that you all 
are convinced, have girded your loins for the fray, and are will- 
ing to make the needed sacrifices of leisure, to gain a certain goal. 
Some of you will lose touch, of course, but many of you will 
"carry on" and "see it through," though you find that of "writing 
many books there is no end and in much study there is weariness 
to the flesh." 

You are to be congratulated that this great school of tech- 
nical scholarship has been inauguarated and that it has such un- 



tiring and competent leaders. It makes the hope for the eventual 
elevation of our business an enduring one and our successors, 
when we now on the floor shall have melted into the infinite azure 
of the past, will quite misread history if they do not date the up- 
ward turn of our business towards higher grades to these very 
years. I have now passed life's meridian and cannot go back to 
school. I did not appreciate until too late what the equipment of 
a real underwriter should be, so I am overwhelmed with shame 
that the examinations that you young people will soon be "eating 
alive" would unhorse me at the first hurdle. (With apologies 
for a sadly confused metaphor, tho' I don't know why snakes 
may not abound on steeple chases.) 

The future of our business lies with you and you can make 
it so different from the past that your wonder will then be not 
that your forbears came thro' so well, but that they came thro' 
at all. We have been and I fear still are so crude, unstable, "hit 
and miss," like "ignorant armies clashing by night." Our saving 
remnant of wise ones, who add science to their wisdom is so small 
that tho' we cannot be the greediest of the greedy, we certainly 
are numbered today by the public and their officials, among the 
suspected classes. Let me protest with vehemence that not all 
our sins are the result of evil intent. Underwriters, as indivi- 
duals, are not wildly worse than their customers and numbers 
among them are men of generous ideals which they labor to ac- 
ohieve. Of this latter type I hope are those you have chosen for 
your guides. 

No one would think of saying today, "Go to, now, I am a 
plumber" (tho' some alleged plumbers seem, to have so hap- 
pened) and immediately begin to wipe joints and lay out sanitary 
equipments for 1,000-room hotels. Such things aren't done that 
way. So, too, it isn't done that way if we want to be oculists, 
or aviators or preachers. Our methods of making underwriters 
have smacked a little of this way but they are not going to con- 
tinue so to smack indefinitely. Only the Uncreated can by fiat 
create something by saying simply "Let there be that," and He is 
yet to say "Let there be Underwriters." You young men evi- 
dently see the trend. You are trimming your sails to this new 
breeze, and I congratulate you. Your resolve means everlastingly 
plugging at courses that are quite uninteresting at times, seem- 



ingly remote from the demands of daily life, complex, mystifying, 
foggy and — and every other gloomy adjective you can think of. 
It means drawing on all your reserves of endurance to carry yuu 
across morasses of fatigue, boredom and tempting distractions. 
But some of you have already found that the more swamps of 
this sort you wade thro' the easier a swamp is to wade. The 
struggle grows less with every victory. 

We are all familiar with the statistics which show how col- 
lege-bred men predominate in the lists of the world's celebrities. 
Those lists are rather depressing to men who have missed the 
opportunity of a University training. To learn that only one man 
in one hundred is a college graduate, but that that 1% furnishes 
73% of those mentioned in "Who's Who," 75% of our Presidents, 
70% of our Supreme Court Justices, etc., does hint that it is a 
bitter handicap to have been compelled to leave school in the 
lower grades. But it is a mistake, an almost inexcusable blunder, 
to surrender in the race because your competitor has had a better 
coach than you. The first prize oftenest goes to the horse that 
has the pole but not always. Even the worst placed, if he belongs 
in the class at all, if he's "all horse" as the jockeys say, need not 
remain among the ruck of the "also rans." But how narrow a 
view I am taking, as tho' beating the other fellow was the leading 
motive. God forbid ! I do regret that any young man or woman 
misses the experience of at least the four years customary in col- 
lege curricula but I really pity very few of them. Many of them 
have had the chance and tossed it over their shoulders. Others 
have taken the chance and murdered it in cold blood thro' four 
wasted years of idleness and its attendant vices. Others learn 
and learn and learn but think never. Oh, collegians are a miscel- 
laneous crew. You need not surrender to them at sight. You 
can train, too. You have your school of Experience which turns 
out some clever graduates. You have your school of Necessity 
which puts you, if you are wise, to very pretty paces, and you 
have your school of Sacrifice, which, if you absorb its spirit, con- 
fers high Degrees and rewards of unanticipated richness. 

And you have this Society. You no longer need feel that 
you are waging an unequal battle without leaders or guidance or 
sympathy. Drink at this fountain (I hope you have the thirst) 
and you need not expect, in spite of the "Who's Who" percen- 



tages, always to be "bossed" or "bawled out" or "fired" by some 
A. B. or C. E. Many of your predecessors have avoided that 
fate without this Society, many more of you and of your suc- 
cessors will avoid it because you have been working members of 
it. 

The President of one of our great Colleges has just told his 
students that social conditions of the present have demonstrated 
anew two things often demonstrated before, that men cannot be 
free unless they are intelligent, that democracy without schools is 
a self contradiction but that education without intelligent unsel- 
fishness will never save the world. He says two-thirds of what 
is being taught in the schools, however necessary it may be, has 
little effect in making people better citizens. As an old preacher 
friend of mine used to say "Universal suffrage may do for the 
millennium but it will never hasten it !" So I would qualify my 
predictions of what these technical curricula will accomplish by 
the caution that Science, even with a big S, will not save the 
world. That is not the whole of the truth that shall make you 
free. This at last brings me to my thesis. That you should sup- 
plement this severe course of technical work by devoting some 
of the little leisure it leaves you to the cultivation of a taste for 
good reading, if you haven't one now. You have been provided 
tonight with a list of books the literary numbers of which repre- 
sent the taste and judgment of a very sound and discriminating 
reader and student, and it would be an encouraging, but I may 
add a somewhat surprising development to find any considerable 
number of novitiates seeing it thro.' Of course no two scholars 
would select the same "five foot shelf." So far as the purely 
literary titles are concerned I would, if I were asked, say that if 
it is intended for the young, or for beginners who have not had 
literary opportunities, it is in certain features a bit stiff and rather 
over-emphasizes the classics which Mark Twain irreverently says 
every one admires but no one reads, and of which the Evening 
Sun recently said we bully our children into reading them be- 
cause our fathers bullied us into reading them. Of course these 
are outrageous extravagances. No one who has ambition for 
thorough culture should fail to know them well. But most of 
the classics are "pretty hard bullets to chew" until our powers 
of intensive reading and reflection have been developed by prac- 
tice. Then, I have a bit of sympathy for living authors. I should 



8 

dislike to see them all starve to death and for that if for no other 
reason I should like to advertize their wares. Finally one prefers 
to give advice that stands a fair chance of being followed and I 
doubt if the modern American youth will ever obey injunctions 
to spend his evenings with extremely sober Christian, Meditative 
Marcus, Piscatorial Isaac or the Omar of the Jug who takes out 
all his fun in just singing about it. 

I have not, myself, at three score, yet graduated from the 
Magazine stage of literature but I have arrived where all maga- 
zines do not look alike. Granting that the monthly or quarterly 
reviews (and in these how England has surpassed us) hold the 
first rank but are not for novitiates, I would commend to you 
as much of the Atlantic Monthly as deals with what you are in- 
terested in (in time you will read almost all of it), the Century 
as specially satisfactory among those which by pictures and fic- 
tion in addition to their serious essays, make a more popular 
appeal; and, in a somewhat similar class, Harpers and Scribners. 
There may be others, but I happen not to be so well acquainted 
with them. Magazines like the Literary Digest that deal in selec- 
tions and summaries have their uses, but the reader covers such 
a multitude of themes so desultorily, they are a sad menace to 
memory and the habit of consecutive thinking. 

Of books, oh, where shall one begin or end? Bearing in 
mind that we have education in view and that the purpose of 
education is to enable one to harmonize with his environment 
and that to so harmonize one must know how to judge men and 
things and events, we may escape the impossible task of building 
up an all-inclusive list and stop with suggesting a few principles 
and examples of selection that may make the path of ambitious 
inexperience fairly enjoyable. 

First, as we are seeking how to be both comfortable and 
efficient, and we are in touch from birth to death with things, 
we ought to read a little natural science, enough of chemistry, 
for instance, to know the atomic and molecular theories of mat- 
ter and why sweetening your coffee is a different process of 
change from uniting a purple, strangling gas with a brown metal 
that burns when you wet it and making thereby common table 
salt. A little physics, teaching us how such universal energies as 



gravity, light, heat and electricity behave under varying condi- 
tions. Even if we already know enough about electricity to har- 
monize with it by keeping away from live wires, or about gravity 
not to jump off a church spire or to let a man step in our eye, 
we will find the study of the more complicated behavior of these 
powers intensely entertaining. 

But the most interesting study for mankind is— folks. Some 
people hold that we have too many of them in our environment 
and most of us would admit that that is true of some sorts. But 
that only emphasizes our need to know. Aside from our daily 
intercourse, we learn about people thro' such books as novels, 
the drama, poetry and histories including biographies. Not all 
novels teach the truth about people. No, few novelists even 
try. It seemingly occurs to few authors that they should imagine 
a real character and then endeavor to show how that sort of an 
individual would behave when he found himself in certain diffi- 
cult but possible situations. The authors who fill our book-shop 
windows just tell make-believe stories, and help you to know 
people no more than a kaleidoscope would. Of the right sort 
that beginners are likely to read with pleasure, real modems, I 
mean, who write wholesomely about our day I would suggest, 
besides those on the list before you, Barrie, Hardy, Wells (with 
empathic exceptions), Mrs. Wharton and others of that grade, 
and when you have "tuned up," advance to DeMorgan, Bennett, 
Marshall, Conrad, Butler, who are strong but not so exciting, 
and if you are of the elect you may finally progress to Meredith 
and James, but these last are not for the idle moments of a sum- 
mer's day. Of course this list is by no means comprehensive in 
scope or perfect in classification, but when you have read these 
authors you will have had one of Theodore Roosevelt's "bully" 
times and you will know more about the human heart than you 
know now.* 

Of the drama which is also a fine guide to the study of folks, 
besides Shakespeare, whose depths you cannot begin to sound 
without commentaries, re-readings and study, there are some 
worth while moderns that are sound and generally not too diffi- 
cult or prosy, like Shaw, Oscar Wilde, H. A. Jones, A. W. Pinero, 



*Thro 



iro some temporary mental aberation, I have made this list of novelists altogether 
too British. Of course there are many American novelists who are well worth any 
one's while like Howells, Mrs. Watts, Winston Churchill and Mrs. Atherton. 



10 

Clyde Fitch, William Vaughn Moody, Stephen Phillips and 
last but not least, Ibsen. Read them and then see them acted 
when you can. Such drama is not a mere amusement, it is very 
educative if remembered and reflected on. 

Of course no one could omit referring to the poets. If you 
have not cultivated this taste begin with the simpler narrative 
poems, Scott's "Lady of the Lake" and "Marmion" with lots of 
action in them ; Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn ;" Tenny- 
son's "Idylls of the King." Not much psychology in these, but 
on them sharpen your appetite for poetry. Browning's dramatic 
lyrics are well within your reach especially if you use Professor 
Phelps' little primer "Browning and How to Know Him," or 
Lafcadio Hearn's lectures delivered to Japanese boys and repro- 
duced by them from their notes. But this room would scarcely 
contain a full list, and catalogues are not for post-prandial ad- 
dresses. 

History, surely — I just commended Lafcadio Hearn's lec- 
tures to his students. I think I get more real help from books 
for the young than from many standard works. For instance 
Prof. Usher's little primer on the Plymouth settlement has given 
me more intimate knowledge of that incident than I ever gained 
elsewhere. Breastead has a cheap school book on very ancient 
history that is delightful reading with fascinating pictures ; Bury 
has a somewhat similar book on Greece. C. R. Fletcher thro' 
Dutton publishes an English history written for the youth of 
England that makes her early times seem very human. You are 
of course most interested in America and her history is rather 
simple reading. Well, John Fisk will interest and entertain any 
one between the ages of say sixteen and ninety. McMaster will 
tell you about the daily life of every day folk since one hundred 
and fifty years ago, what they ate, wore, read, worshipped, worked 
at and amused themselves with and thought and talked about. 
But I know you will leave the room if I begin another catagogue. 

I have already dragged out this sermon to clerical lengths 
and must close. You will naturally grow wiser and better for 
the right reading of the right books, you will have a very handy 
resource for pleasure that at times reaches the degree of delight. 
As advancing years impair your physical endurance and limit 



11 

your possible amusements, the reading habit takes care of many 
otherwise sad and monotonous hours. The fields of literature 
are so limitless, so perenially green, browsing in them is — oh, 
how it is sweet! There are many moments when one at least 
imagines himself in perfect harmony with his environment, es- 
caped to a higher world where beauty and reason and the will of 
God prevail. 

Oh, young men "Look to the End — Look to the End." The 
Gods sell all things at a dear price, whether they be of the tinsel 
that glitters today and betrays you tomorrow, or the imperishable 
product of the refiner's fire that "stands by" thro' the vista of 
the years. Look to the End. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

020 948 965 Al 



BOOKS EVERY FIRE INSURANCE MAN 
SHOULD KNOW 

Bible 

Aetna "Bible" 

Shakespeare 

Fire Insurance and How to Build — Moore 

Pilgrim's Progress 

Early Insurance Offices in Massachusetts — Hardy 

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 

Fire and Explosion Risks — Von Schwartz 

Jungle Books — Kipling 

Insurance Law — Richards 

Rubayiat of Omar Khayyam 

Agents Key to Fire Insurance — Barbour 

Don Quixote — Cervantes 

Automatic Sprinkler Protection — Dana 

David Copperfield — Dickens 

Business of Insurance — Dunham 

Sketch Book — Irving 

Fire Insurance Companies — Relton 

Tom Sawyer — Twain 

Handbook of Fire Protection — Crosby Fiske-Foster 

Compleat Angler — Walton 

Lectures on Fire Insurance — Boston Insurance Library Ass'n. 

Three Musketeers — Dumas 

Insurance Engineers' Handbook — Matthews 

Last Days of Pompeii — Bulwer Lytton 

Yale Readings in Insurance 

Treasure Island — Stevenson 

Experience Grading and Rating Schedule — Richards 

Les Miserables — Hugo 

Analytic Schedule — Dean 

Natural History of Selborne — White 

Fire Underwriters' Text Book — Griswold 

Ivanhoe — Scott 

Fire Insurance Inspection and Underwriting — Doming e-Lincol'i 

Alice in Wonderland — Carroll 



PRINTED DECEMBER, 1919 



